The ASP or CSP chip added some new features to the Sound Blaster line, such as hardware-assisted speech synthesis (through the TextAssist software), QSound audio spatialization technology for digital ( PCM) wave playback, and PCM audio compression and decompression. When a daughterboard, such as the Wave Blaster, Roland SCB-7, Roland SCB-55, Yamaha DB50XG, Yamaha DB60XG was installed on the Sound Blaster, the Wave Blaster behaved like a standard MIDI device, accessible to any MPU-401 compatible MIDI software. The SB16's MPU-401 emulation was limited to UART (dumb) mode only, but this was sufficient for most MIDI software. The Sound Blaster 16 retained the Pro's OPL-3 support for FM synthesis, and was mostly compatible with software written for the older Sound Blaster and Sound Blaster Pro sound cards. For optional wavetable synthesis, the Sound Blaster 16 also added an expansion-header for add-on MIDI- daughterboards, called a Wave Blaster connector, and a game port for optional connection with external MIDI sound modules. Sound Blaster 16 (June 1992), the successor to the Sound Blaster Pro, introduced CD-quality digital audio to the Sound Blaster line.
